Toshiba Says Tanaka to Take Over as President in June

Hisao Tanaka, newly nominated president and chief executive officer of Toshiba Corp., poses for a portrait at an undisclosed location in this undated handout photo released to the media on Feb. 26, 2013. Source: Toshiba Corp. via Bloomberg

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Toshiba Corp., the Japanese maker of
flash-memory chips, elevators and nuclear reactors, said Hisao
Tanaka will take over as president in June as it tries to
bolster growth from energy and chip operations.

Tanaka, 62, a corporate senior executive vice president in
charge of strategy planning, purchasing and production, will
replace President Norio Sasaki in June, the company said in a
statement today. Sasaki, who has headed Toshiba since June 2009,
will become vice chairman, and Atsutoshi Nishida will remain
chairman, Toshiba said. The changes are subject to approval by
the board following a shareholders meeting in June.

The new president’s tasks will include expanding the Tokyo-based company’s energy and chipmaking operations while cutting
costs to increase profit. Toshiba, which supplies chips to Apple
Inc., also needs to rebuild its home-appliances business after
the unit had a 1.3 billion yen ($14 million) loss last quarter.

Tanaka’s experience in emerging markets is “very
important” for the company, Nishida, 69, said today in Tokyo.
The chairman said he had been asked to stay on and will step
down in June 2014.

Tanaka joined Toshiba in 1973 and has held his current
title since June 2011, according to the company’s website.
Sasaki, 63, will be the first vice chairman since listing in
1949, according to the company. The last three presidents all
served for about four years.

Toshiba fell 0.9 percent to 420 yen as of 2:07 p.m. in
Tokyo trading, compared with a 2.1 percent decline for the
benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average. The company, the biggest
flash-memory maker after Samsung Electronics Co., has gained 25
percent this year, giving it a market value of about $19
billion.

Sasaki’s Turnaround

Sasaki has turned around Tokyo-based Toshiba, leading the
company to two consecutive annual profits following a record 344
billion-yen net loss in the year ended March 2009. The
executive, who joined Toshiba in 1972, has used acquisitions to
bolster the company’s smart-energy and chipmaking operations.

Toshiba bought San Antonio-based energy-technology
management company Consert Inc. for more than 1 billion yen this
month, it said Feb. 7. It acquired Swiss electronic-metering
company Landis+Gyr AG in 2011 to boost its energy-management
sales.

Sasaki will become vice chairman of Keidanren, Japan’s
biggest business lobby, the group said Feb. 12. He also is a
member of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, a
government advisory body that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe revived
in January.

Toshiba posted a larger-than-expected profit for the three
months ended December because of higher semiconductor prices, a
weaker yen and rising sales of power equipment. Net income
totaled 29.3 billion yen, the company said Jan. 31.

Chip Prices

The company benefited from higher chip prices caused by
production cuts, rising sales of mobile devices such as Apple
Inc.’s iPads, and demand for gas-fired power stations following
the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The weaker yen boosted the
value of overseas sales and assets.

The company is in talks to sell as much as 36 percent of
its Westinghouse Electric atomic-power business after being
forced to increase its stake in the unit to 87 percent. Toshiba
was compelled to buy 20 percent of Westinghouse last month after
Shaw Group Inc. used a push option to sell its stake.